'How else?' she asked. 'Otherwise, they would have to wait until nature opened the bud, sometimes many years.'
Duwan swallowed. 'You?'
'I was fortunate. The master who opened me was kind. And he was not large. When a master is large the female sometimes dies.'
'I will go home,' Duwan told himself. 'I will tell them that we want nothing from this land of barbarism. I will tell them that we are best off where we are, even if Du visits only for a short period. I will tell them that immortality is not an end to seek, that returning to the earth is, indeed, a splendid wish, but not as vital as being civilized, not as important as loving one's fellows, as working together, as honoring Du, and as loving one's spoken choice.'
'Did you kill a master?' Jai asked, later.
He nodded.
'They will follow.'
'Let them,' he said, thinking that it would be pleasant for his sword to drink the blood of creatures who beat and killed their brothers.
'They will have smellers to follow our trail, and they will be many and well armed.'
'What is a smeller?'
'They are small, but have sharp teeth.'
'Du, female, speak, straight. Answer my question,' he roared. She cringed away. 'They live in the houses of the Devourer masters and eat scraps and sometimes, when a pong is difficult, they allow them to chew upon the pong's feet and legs—'
'Animals that can smell our trace?'
'Yes, yes,' she said eagerly. 'We must find water, and walk in it for a long way.'
Duwan mused. The settlements had been small. He estimated that no more than four or five could be mustered for the chase, and if they were no more skilled in weaponry than the one he'd killed—'We will leave a trace to be followed easily,' he said.
He saw his pursuers from the top of a ridge early the next morning. They were moving fast, following a scrambling pack of small, lightly furred animals restrained on leashes. He spent the next few hours selecting his spot, and chose a pass between two sheer slopes, where no more than two of them could face him at one time. He rested there, after drinking his fill at a stream, and positioned Jai among rocks high on the side of the hill.
'The sniffers will find me and bite me,' she wailed. He gathered stones the size of his fist and piled them in front of her.
'Should an animal try to come to you hit him with a stone.' She seized a stone and held it with both hands. 'We can still run. We can follow the stream. The sniffers cannot follow us if we walk in the water, for the water washes away our trace.'
'Peace,' he said. 'You have a view of the approach. When you see them coming, make this bird sound.' He demonstrated the cooing sigh of a bird of the far north and, after a few attempts, she made an acceptable imitation. Then he went below, sat on a large boulder, and examined the cutting edges of his swords.
It was growing late when he heard Jai's first attempt, and then heard her succeed in making a cooing sound that would not have fooled the youngest Drinker in the valley. He rose, stood with his feet spread, his weapons hanging at his side. He heard the careless, scrambling approach from below, and as the pursuers neared, he counted four males and six of the small, snarling animals. He wished for a bow and a quiver of arrows, but when he'd left the valley he'd had only one hand and no need of a bow. He had been spotted. The four below were surprised. They halted and stared up at him and consulted among themselves. Duwan stood motionless, his swords in their sheaths. One of the males below bent and, one by one, released the sniffers, pointed, barked an order, and the six animals began to slink up the hill, following the trace left by Duwan and Jai. When the leading sniffer spotted Duwan the fur raised into a crest on its back and it leaped forward with a whining snarl. The others followed. Duwan's swords flashed as he drew them, and he met the first sniffer's leap toward his stomach with flashing blade, caught the next in midair with the backswing, stabbed deeply into the barrel chest of a third. The fourth managed to sink sharp teeth painfully into his lower leg as he dispatched five and six with both hands working in perfect coordination, and then the chewer whined for only a moment as iron bit into its spine. Startled shouts from below. The four Devourers rushed toward him together, and then, as they reached the narrow pass, the two larger took the lead, swords at the ready. Duwan gave ground until he had reached the pre-chosen position which gave him some advantage. The two enemy had to come at him face on, unable to split up and get him between them. He parried an angry lunge with his shortsword and measured the skill of the second man with a feint of his longsword. The clash of metal echoed off the hillsides. Behind the two fighting Devourers the other two yelled encouragement. Duwan buried his longsword a hand's width into the heart of one, opened the throat of the other. Two dead lay at his feet and he retreated a few steps so that there would be no danger of stumbling over the dead as the other two fighters moved forward, their dark eyes shifting, a new caution upon them.
